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Essential reading for anyone interested in writing biography or memoir, with practical advice from successful biographers and creative writing teachers.
The Arvon Book of Literary Non-Fiction is an essential guide to writing in a wide range of genres, from travel writing to feminist polemic and writing on nature, history, death, friendship and sexuality. Part 1 explores the full range of genres and asks the question: what is literary non-fiction? Part 2 includes tips by such bestselling literary non-fiction writers as: Lisa Appignanesi, Rosemary Bailey, Gillian Beer, Bidisha, Lizzie Collingham, William Dalrymple, Stevie Davies, Colin Grant, Rahila Gupta, Philip Hoare, Siri Hustvedt, Alice Kessler-Harris, Barry Lopez, Richard Mabey, Robert Macfarlane, Sara Maitland, Neil McKenna, Caroline Moorehead, Susie Orbach, Jennifer Potter, Susan Sellers, Dava Sobel, Diana Souhami, Dale Spender, Francis Spufford, Daniel Swift, Colin Thubron, Natasha Walter, Sara Wheeler and Simon Winchester. Part 3 offers practical advice - from planning and researching to writing a proposal and finding an agent or a publisher when your work is complete.
Dashiell Hammett changed the face of crime fiction. In five novels published over five years as well as a string of stories, he transformed the mystery genre into literature and left us with the figure of the hard-boiled detective, from the Continental Op to Sam Spade—immortalized on film by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon—and the more glamorous Thin Man, also made iconic with the aid of Hollywood. A brilliant writer, Hammett was a complex and enigmatic man. After 1934 until his death in 1961, he published no more novels and suffered from a writer’s block that both shamed and maimed him. He is identified with his tough protagonists, but his tuberculosis compromised his masculine ...
From Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith to Val McDermid and JK Rowling, After Agatha is an indispensable guide to women's crime writing over the last century and an exploration of why women read crime Spanning the 1930s to present day, After Agatha charts the explosion in women's crime writing and examines key developments on both sides of the Atlantic: from the women writers at the helm of the UK Golden Age and their American and Canadian counterparts fighting to be heard, to the 1980s experimental trio, Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, who created the first female PIs, and the more recent emergence of forensic crime writing and domestic noir thrillers such as Gone Girl and...
lluminated by a profound yet humorous vision, Lifting the Taboo explores the specific relationship women of many colors, cultures, ages, and sexual orientations have to their own deaths, their attitudes towards loss, and their disposition to their role as primary care-givers to the dying.Specifically, the book weighs the implications of breast cancer and examines in detail Alzheimer's Disease which, contrary to popular myth, can in several significant ways be perceived as a women's disease. Investigating mothers' responses to children's deaths, Sally Cline establishes that women's relationships to death are intricately connected to the experience of giving birth. They are, she argues, therefore psychologically and emotionally different from those of men. Cline goes on to examine women's roles and responses to AIDS and suicide, women's sexual relationships while dying, how society views widows as leftover lives, and women's radical work in hospices and death therapy, as well as their roles as female funeral directors.
The author of Just Desserts: Women and Food issues a startling but compelling call for single women to embrace their freedom and redefine and celebrate a non-genital sexuality. Essential reading for any woman who has ever felt that her body is not her own.
'Taut, beautiful and savage' Guardian A man travels to his son's school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she's playing. And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father. Subtle, sophisticated and displaying an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour, these stories from...
Radclyffe Hall was the pen-name of Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall, the author of The Well of Loneliness, which on its publication in 1928 became the centre of a trial for obscenity and was banned in Britain until 1949. The novel itself openly discussed lesbian relationships and challenged contemporary ideas about lesbianism. Radclyffe-Hall's life as well as her novel flouted convention, and Sally Cline's biography, first published in 1998, explores her other literary works, as well as her relationships and politics, which were often at odds.
Life Writing: A Writers' & Artists' Companion is an essential guide to writing biography, autobiography and memoir. PART 1 explores the history and forms of life writing and the challenges and potential pitfalls of the genre. PART 2 includes tips by bestselling writers: Diana Athill, Alan Bennett, Alain de Botton, Jill Dawson, Millicent Dillon, Margaret Drabble, Geoff Dyer, Victoria Glendinning, Lyndall Gordon, Peter Hayter, Richard Holmes, Michael Holroyd, Kathryn Hughes, Diane Johnson, Hermione Lee, Andrew Lownie, Janet Malcolm, Alexander Masters, Nancy Milford, Blake Morrison, Andrew Morton, Clare Mulley, Jenni Murray, Nicholas Murray, Kristina Olsson, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Meryle Secrest, Miranda Seymour, Frances Spalding, Hilary Spurling, Boyd Tonkin, Edmund White. PART 3 includes practical advice - from planning, researching and interviewing to writing, pacing and navigating ethical issues.
Writing Historical Fiction: A Writers' & Artists' Companion is an invaluable companion for a writer working in this challenging and popular literary genre, whether your period is Ancient Rome or World War II. PART 1 includes reflections on the genre and provides a short history of historical fiction. PART 2 contains guest contributions from Margaret Atwood, Ian Beck, Madison Smartt Bell, Ronan Bennett, Vanora Bennett, Tracy Chevalier, Lindsay Clarke, Elizabeth Cook, Anne Doughty, Sarah Dunant, Michel Faber, Margaret George, Philippa Gregory, Katharine McMahon, Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Hilary Mantel, Alan Massie, Ian Mortimer, Kate Mosse, Charles Palliser, Orhan Pamuk, Edward Rutherfurd, Manda Scott, Adam Thorpe, Stella Tillyard, Rose Tremain, Alison Weir and Louisa Young. PART 3 offers practical exercises and advice on such topics as research, plots and characters, mastering authentic but accessible dialogue and navigating the world of agents and publishers.